Again? Didn't we already pay our dues once during the day? (Asking for monthly votes)

Cheng Xuemin simply gave up struggling and pretended to focus on writing his script, eyes fixed on the page.
But with a ticking time bomb about to explode beside him, how could he possibly calm his mind? His thoughts raced as he tried to figure out how he’d wriggle out of the situation when the moment came.
"Xuemin, you look awfully nervous. What exactly are you hiding in that schoolbag?"
Feng Jiayou rummaged through it, but found nothing out of the ordinary—just review materials from the affiliated school.
"Could it be that somewhere among these notes, you’ve tucked away a love letter from a female classmate?"
She continued to tease him.
"Uh..." Cheng Xuemin glanced at the bag Feng Jiayou had just searched, surprised and flustered. He hurried to defend himself, "What love letter? There’s nothing secret in that bag!"
"Then why were you so nervous just now?" Feng Jiayou pouted, refusing to let the matter drop.
"Was I?"
"Maybe you were just startled by that teacher Chen earlier!"
Cheng Xuemin quickly shifted the blame to Chen Shumin—if he didn’t drag him in as a scapegoat now, when would he?
But he was puzzled, too. Where had his sample copy of Yanhe Literature gone?
He was sure he’d just put it in his bag.
"Did that teacher Chen come looking for you again? Asking for your novella?"
Feng Jiayou, successfully distracted, cast a furtive glance toward the library desks and asked in a low voice.
"He did! But I told him I’d already submitted it to Yanjing Literature today. He said I was too late!"
Cheng Xuemin nodded and began tidying up the materials on the desk. He still couldn’t find the sample copy of Yanhe Literature. Where could it have gone?
Could Chen Shumin have picked it up just now?
Luckily, the reply letter and the payment slip were already in Cheng Xuemin’s pocket, not tucked inside the sample.
"Then why did he scare you so?"
Feng Jiayou, not so easily fooled, helped him tidy the desk while asking.
"It’s nothing! It’s just that Teacher Chen figured out everything about us!"
"Remember how Dening came looking for me at the library a few times?"
"And now, with the rumors about the ‘Horseman’ author Lao Xu spreading around Yanda, Teacher Chen’s suspicions fell on me!"
"Today, with this novella, he even guessed at once that I am the author Lao Xu!"
Seeing how shocked Feng Jiayou looked, Cheng Xuemin quickly finished his explanation.
"What? Teacher Chen figured it out? Won’t all the students at Yanda know soon?"
"Beijia, Jianying, and the others will find out too?"
Feng Jiayou was equally startled—how had Chen Shumin seen through it so easily?
"No, no! Teacher Chen is very discreet, he promised not to spread it around."
Cheng Xuemin shook his head, having packed up his bag, but the Yanhe Literature sample was still missing.
A small sense of relief washed over him—thank goodness it had disappeared. Otherwise, his secret stash of cash would have been discovered by Feng Jiayou and he’d have to hand it over.
He could already imagine being forced to kneel on the washboard.
"As long as he doesn’t spread it around. But actually, it doesn’t matter anymore. After we watch the movie tonight, we won’t be able to hide it anyway!"
Thinking of the movie that evening, Feng Jiayou was already eagerly awaiting it.
"Why aren’t Dening and Bailin here yet? Didn’t we agree to meet at the library at five thirty?"
Feng Jiayou checked her watch—it was nearly five thirty.
"Maybe they went back to the dorm first?"
Cheng Xuemin offered a reminder.
"I don’t think so... Here they come!"
Feng Jiayou, keeping an eye on the library entrance, spotted Zhang Dening and Bai Lin coming in, looking around. She quickly raised her hand in greeting.
"Let’s go, dinner first!"
Without waiting for them to come over, she hurried to meet them.
"Hey, you forgot your magazine!"
Just as Cheng Xuemin was about to catch up, a female classmate sitting in the row behind stood up and called out, handing him the magazine.
"Yanhe Literature? How did it end up with her?"
Cheng Xuemin was dumbfounded—the sample copy that Feng Jiayou had searched for so long was actually in another classmate’s hands.
"I... I saw you so absorbed in your writing just now, I didn’t want to disturb you, so I just took your magazine to read. Sorry!"

"It's fine, keep it for now, we’ll talk later!"
So that was it—such things happened all the time in the library. But Cheng Xuemin didn’t dare retrieve the sample just now.
He said a quick word to the girl and hurried after Feng Jiayou. He absolutely couldn’t let her see him speaking furtively to another girl, or there’d be no end of trouble explaining.
"Eh?"
The girl watched Cheng Xuemin leave, bewildered. The copy of Yanhe Literature in her hands had no catalog number from the university library—it wasn’t part of the collection. It must belong to that classmate.
It was also the latest issue, freshly printed, so she guessed it might be a sample sent to a contributing author.
Which meant there was definitely a piece written by that classmate in this issue!
Another hidden ‘Horseman’ like Lao Xu?
Her eyes sparkled with curiosity; she felt she might have stumbled onto something interesting.
Fine!
She’d keep it for now, and come back tomorrow to see if she could meet this slightly flustered classmate.
"Dening, Bailin, you’re here!"
Feng Jiayou went up to greet them. "You haven’t eaten, right? Let’s get dinner first—movie doesn’t start till seven!"
"Jiayou, Xuemin!" Zhang Dening and Bai Lin nodded in greeting, then looked around. "Where are Huang Beijia and Cha Jianying? Weren’t you all coming together?"
"They had something come up and said they’d watch the movie tomorrow instead."
Feng Jiayou pursed her lips. After class, Huang Beijia and Cha Jianying had gone their separate ways, eager to avoid being invited out.
And it wasn’t just them—everyone seemed to have their own little schemes as soon as afternoon classes ended.
"What? Then maybe... we should wait and all go together tomorrow?"
Bai Lin looked apologetic.
"It’s fine, since we’re already here, why wait till tomorrow?"
Feng Jiayou waved her hands. "Besides, I already bought the tickets, it’d be a waste not to use them."
Of course, the tickets weren’t actually bought, but as she said, a lot would go unused tonight regardless.
After all, she had over thirty tickets on hand—she couldn’t very well invite thirty friends and relatives just to avoid wasting them.
That would be too much!
A couple tickets was one thing, but if she used all thirty, everyone would know something was up.
"Then let’s go tonight! Saves us another trip." Zhang Dening nodded. The tickets were already bought—what else could they say?
"Alright, let’s eat first!"
They’d already had a feast at lunch, so a simple meal at the canteen would suffice that evening; Feng Jiayou didn’t want to splurge again.
"Great! Since you bought the tickets, Bailin and I will treat you two to dinner tonight."
Zhang Dening, holding Xuemin’s prime novella in her hands, could even use it to claim expenses for this outing—she could get reimbursement from Lao Zhou and Lao Li later.
That was always how it worked. To secure Xuemin’s latest, she’d made plenty of trips to Yanda, with Lao Li approving two to five yuan in activity funds each time.
Today was no different—knowing Feng Jiayou and Xuemin had invited her for a movie, she’d gotten three yuan from the office.
"How could I let you treat us! I invited you to the movie, it wouldn’t be right to let you pay for dinner."
"Besides, Yanda’s canteen is cheap for students—we have meal tickets and subsidies, it’s really not expensive."
After the usual back-and-forth, Feng Jiayou ended up treating Zhang Dening and Bai Lin to dinner.
"Xuemin, any new ideas coming up?"
At the table, Zhang Dening, as editor, asked as usual about his next plans, keeping a close eye on his output.
"Dening, you can’t be serious! I just turned in a novella this morning, and you’re already chasing me for the next one?"
"Even Jiayou isn’t this relentless!"
It was true!
His own wife had told him not to push himself before the New Year, and to focus on writing the script for The Horseman.
But at Yanjing Literature, he turned in a piece in the morning and they were pressing him for another that same night. No matter how prolific, this was too much!
"Hehe, no, not at all! I was just asking. Really, I wasn’t trying to rush you."
Zhang Dening realized she was being too aggressive and waved her chopsticks, denying any intent to pressure him.
"Dening, Xuemin’s probably going to focus on the script for a while, not write any stories."
Feng Jiayou helped Xuemin out, feeling a little proud as she spoke.
"Just the script? Not writing stories? Why?"
When Zhang Dening and Bai Lin heard that Xuemin was stopping his stories, it was as if a bolt of lightning had struck them.
How could their star author at Yanjing Literature stop writing? Scriptwriting? That was hardly serious business in their minds.
"It’s because our Horseman is being adapted into a film, and Xuemin wants to write the script himself!"
Feng Jiayou explained.
"I heard from Lao Zhou and the others that a movie is in the works for The Horseman, but isn’t that the Beijing Film Studio’s project? Don’t they have professional screenwriters?"
Zhang Dening knew a bit more than Bai Lin and was aware that the film adaptation was already in development—with professional screenwriters on the job. Why would the original author write the script?
Besides, Xuemin wrote fiction—could he even write a script?
"They do, but we still want to give it a try ourselves!" Feng Jiayou glanced around to make sure no one was listening, then whispered, "If the script’s good, Xuemin gets a big fee for the adaptation!"
She slyly held up two fingers in a covert gesture.
"Two hundred yuan for the adaptation? Is it worth all this trouble? He could write another story in the same time and make even more!"
Bai Lin, seeing the secretive gesture, thought the sum must be huge—only to hear it was just two hundred yuan.
Xuemin’s stories easily brought in one or two hundred per piece.
Especially the novella he’d submitted that morning; by their estimates, it would take at least sixteen hundred yuan to secure it from Xuemin.
Sixteen hundred!
That was more than three years’ salary for Bai Lin.
With earnings like that, why would the couple care about a mere two hundred yuan script fee? Did they not know how to do the math?
"Two thousand, actually."
Zhang Dening, not familiar with studio rates, nodded in agreement—why bother for two hundred yuan? He could write another novella and get over a thousand.
But seeing Feng Jiayou shake her head, Zhang Dening’s heart skipped a beat and she asked, trembling,
"Dening, you know the business! Two thousand for the adaptation fee—who wouldn’t want to write it themselves?"
Feng Jiayou managed to hide her glee as she nodded.
"How much? Two thousand?!"
Bai Lin, who had already been pouting, was completely stunned.
Two thousand?
For adapting The Horseman into a script, the original author would get two thousand yuan?
My god!
That was several years’ salary for a junior editor like her!
"Bai Lin, can you keep your voice down?"
Seeing Bai Lin’s reaction, Feng Jiayou hurried to shush her—couldn’t she be a little less dramatic, a little more composed?
"Two thousand! Jiayou, two thousand yuan for the adaptation fee! You two... you’re going to be rich!"
Bai Lin, realizing her outburst, quickly leaned in and exclaimed in a fierce whisper, her gaze at Xuemin now practically melting.
Such an outstanding man—she’d noticed it long ago!
Why hadn’t she made her move back in northern Shaanxi?
Now it was too late!
All she could do was watch Feng Jiayou revel in her triumph.
Two thousand yuan!
Add in the novella from that morning, and the previous two short stories—Xuemin had only been in Beijing a short while, and he was already earning four thousand yuan in royalties!
And four thousand yuan—for a junior editor, that was nothing short of astronomical...